CHAPTER 15
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THE STAB WAS SO fast it seemed instantaneous, but everything that followed looked like it was moving in slow motion.
Leander didn’t even seem to understand what had just happened.
He kept clinging to his princess with a confused look on his gaunt face while gallons of white blood—far more than any human body should’ve been able to hold—poured out of his sundered chest and landed on the throne room’s golden floor.
For what felt like an eternity, nobody moved.
Even Bex’s feet were rooted in shock. When she finally managed to overcome it, she raced forward and yanked Leander off his princess, whose arm was still sticking through his chest. This caused even more blood to dump out of him, but while Bex was trying to get Leander to safety, the prince was fighting back.
“No,” he wheezed, grabbing at Bex with weakened, blood-slicked hands. “Don’t take me from her. I can’t leave her like this.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Bex hissed, pulling him harder. “She’s a Blade of Gilgamesh, the Traitor King! Of course they used her against you the moment your loyalty went in the wrong direction.”
Leander made another gurgling sound of protest, but Bex had had enough.
She hauled him out of danger and shoved him at Adrian, who was already digging his medical supplies frantically out of his coat, before turning to put herself between the wounded Leander and the enemy.
She’d just gotten into position when Bex caught another glimpse of the Princess of Sorrow’s face.
It was enough to make her pause. The princess might have the same carved body and tooled-gold eyes as all of Gilgamesh’s dolls, but the look of abject horror on her face belonged solely to Mara.
If ivory and gold had been capable of producing tears, she would’ve been weeping rivers, but her smooth-carved cheeks were dry.
She didn’t even have enough control over her body anymore to open her lips and let out the scream Bex could see building inside her as Gilgamesh’s weapon lifted her perfectly carved bloody hand and swung again.
Bex was fast enough this time. She sidestepped the blow and struck back, swinging Drox like a bat to bash the terrified but still deadly-looking princess with the flat of her blade.
Mara didn’t even try to dodge. She took the hit full across her front, letting Bex throw her across the circular throne room into the wall on the opposite side.
She landed with enough force to flatten the golden carving of ancient Uruk, but the real damage came when she slid to the floor, revealing the cracks Bex’s hit had opened all over her carved body.
“No!” Leander screamed, fighting Adrian’s grip as the witch tried desperately to keep him still. “Don’t hurt her!”
“Yes,” Mara said at the same time, giving her sister a desperate look even as her cracked body pushed itself back up with the janky motion of a marionette. “Do it again, Bexa. Shatter me before—”
Her plea cut off as her body shot forward, her carved white feet slipping on the slick gold floor as she charged recklessly at the enemy.
Her movements were so obvious that Bex could’ve hit her with her eyes closed, but she didn’t even raise her sword.
She spun out of the way instead, letting the Princess of Sorrow run right past. When she was in the clear, Bex turned to Nemini, who was standing directly behind her as usual.
“Can you keep Mara off me without hurting her?”
“Probably,” Nemini said, glancing at the princess, who was already wheeling back around for another charge. “But what will you be doing?”
“Stopping this tragedy at the source,” Bex growled, turning to glare at the Crown Prince, who was still watching from the golden dais with Ishtar’s stolen sword at in his hand.
Nemini’s lips curved into a slight frown. “Be careful. He was War’s prince for a reason.”
Bex didn’t care. She’d already defeated War once, and she’d rather fight Gilgamesh himself right now than keep hitting the sobbing Mara.
“Just keep everyone alive,” she ordered, getting into position. “This shouldn’t take long.”
The Queen of Pride nodded and stepped up to take Bex’s place, facing off against their tragic sister while Bex launched herself across the throne room to drive Drox’s blade into the Prince of War’s heart.
That was the plan, at least. Unfortunately, Drox’s point didn’t get within a foot of the prince’s golden armor before he stepped out of the way.
The move was so fast Bex’s eyes could hardly track it, but by the time she slammed her boots into the slick floor to course correct, the prince was already behind her.
“Rebexa,” he said in the same commanding voice he’d used to order her sister, “kill yoursel—”
“That’s not my name, asshole!” Bex roared, spinning around to unleash a blast of fire straight to his face.
The flames were roaring around her body by this point, stoked by the wrath of what had been done to her sweetest sister.
Their heat was already turning the golden floor under her feet to mush.
The conflagration should’ve scorched the flesh off the prince’s quintessence-caked bones, but Alexander paid the fire no attention. He simply flicked his wrist.
What happened next was too fast for Bex’s brain to follow.
One moment, her fire was about to cook his face.
The next, it was gone, cut out of existence by a sword so sharp, the fabric of reality snapped and frayed wherever its edge rested.
Bex was still trying to wrap her mind around the concept when that impossibly sharp sword swung at her.
She barely got her own sword up in time.
She blocked with Drox out of five thousand years of habit, but the moment the Blade of Ishtar touched her own, Bex knew she’d made a fatal mistake.
Her Drox was normally an unbreakable wall.
Even when he’d been whittled down to a sliver, he’d never failed to stop an attack.
But when the enemy’s sword met Bex’s this time, that unthinkably sharp edge sliced through him like a razor, cutting the unbreakable metal of the gods, the blessing of Enki himself, like it was paper.
If Bex hadn’t been burning with the combined fire of all of Ishtar’s demons, the prince would’ve cut her sword in half before she’d realized what was happening.
Bex was burning, though, and she moved as fast as her flames, snatching Drox back into his ring before the prince’s terrible weapon could do more than nick him.
That quick thinking saved her sword. Unfortunately, it also left Bex without a defense when the prince swung again, his stolen sword moving so fast she didn’t have a prayer of dodging.
Frantically, Bex pulled up the fear-demon scales she’d used against today’s first prince, but she already knew it was useless.
If a Divine Blade of Enki couldn’t stop it, flesh and bone had no shot.
The prince’s sword didn’t even slow down as it sliced the black scales off her with effortless grace to cut into Bex’s side.
It was the same place she’d gotten hit the first time she’d faced a prince at seventeen.
Bex had gotten faster over the years, so the wound wasn’t as deep this time, but the damage was still done.
She could actually feel her regeneration recoiling from undoing the work of Ishtar’s weapon.
The result was a gush of hot black blood running down her side as she rolled to a stop and whirled back around to face the smugly smiling prince.
“Now you understand,” he said, turning Ishtar’s black sword to show Bex the cutting edge, which was so sharp that blood didn’t even cling to it. “I might not be able to name you, but no creation of Ishtar can defeat their goddess’s sword.”
“And you’re telling me this why?” Bex demanded, pressing a hand against her wound. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to surrender now?”
That was what the princes who talked to her in the middle of combat were usually after, but Alexander shook his head.
“It wouldn’t matter anymore if you did,” he said as he stepped back into his stance. “Didn’t you hear me earlier? This world is as good as gone. You could throw yourself at Gilgamesh’s feet, and he would no longer care. It’s already over. We’re just killing time until the countdown’s finished.”
“If that’s how you feel, why don’t you get out of my way?” Bex offered. “It’ll save you a lot of pain.”
The Crown Prince didn’t bother with a response.
He just attacked, moving faster than any opponent Bex had ever fought as he swung his sword at her neck.
She moved just in time to save her head, lighting up in an explosion of fire the second the prince got close.
If she couldn’t block his sword, Bex reasoned, she’d burn off his hands instead.
Even the Blade of Ishtar still needed to be swung, but no sooner had her flames shot out than the prince’s sword flicked back, and all the fire she’d just thrown at him vanished without so much as a puff of smoke.
He cut them out of existence, Drox explained when he felt her shock. The Blade of Ishtar is the sharpest tool Enki ever made. It can cut things I can’t even conceive of.
“Then we’ll just have to get it out of his hands,” Bex snarled, drawing her sword again.
She pulled on her own power at the same time.
Not the Bonfire of Wrath again. This was an ability Bex hadn’t tried yet but had already seen in action.
She even had a pretty good idea of how it worked.
All she had to do was focus on her refusal to let this son of her hated enemy take anything else away from her.
Gilgamesh already had enough, as evidenced by the golden room they were standing in.
To demand her defeat as well was pure greed, and the moment Bex threw that sin onto her fire, the notch Ishtar’s Blade had put in Drox repaired itself.